


a feather will turn the scales

by hes_made_of_gold (how_fickle_my_heart)



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Sex Pollen, not fun sex pollen, sex pollen gone very wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-15 12:36:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3447419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/how_fickle_my_heart/pseuds/hes_made_of_gold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason gets home and googles consent, after.</p><p>What happens when you sleep with the wrong person? (Or, the morality of sex pollen, a study by Jason Todd.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	a feather will turn the scales

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone! Just wanted to put some general notes in this section if you're interested. The title comes from Measure for Measure, which is an excellent Shakespeare play filled with dubious morality. It also acts as my main inspiration. Additionally, this work wouldn't be here without [Min](http://jousama.tumblr.com), who helped me pick this piece up after a few months in my drafts folder and work out the scenes I had run into a brick wall with.

‘Jason. Jason, Jason!’ the voice had cried out. He had been shaken, forcefully, clutched by the shoulders with strong hands. He’d curled into the touch. C’mon, harder, Dick, he had wanted to say but the words never quite journeyed to his tongue. A strange strangled sound came out instead. He hadn’t quite noticed it through the fog and the need.

 

‘Jay. I need you to focus,’ Dick was imploring. He’d sounded like he was begging, and Jesus if it hadn’t made Jason buck against him even more. It was all a flurry of hard muscle and the relentless fluctuation between the pounding of more more more grab take want flooding his senses and the slow building horror accumulating in the back of his head.

 

In some other world he might’ve paused and considered the nausea trying to break through. Instead Jason‘s reason had been stormed and displaced by this consuming feeling. It had spilled out onto his tongue in a stream of please please please and I’m begging you’s.

 

Jason wouldn’t have recognised himself. Dick hardly seemed to. The brother that held Jason up against the apartment wall that night had been panicked and afraid, tears building up in his eyes in either frustration or some misguided attempt at empathy.

 

(Misguided empathy is a good explanation for the whole ordeal, actually.)

 

Jason had pressed himself against Dick against the wall. Nightwing had his arms around him, trying to sooth him through touch when it had only amplified everything running amok through Jason’s blood. The gap between Jason stumbling and Dick, already hazy in outline, asking what’s wrong? and Dick acquiescing was likely a long one, but was lost to the raging desperation scrambling under his skin.

 

(And maybe if Jason was not so used to giving himself over to a tide of emotion he might’ve noticed the unnaturally wide pupils of his brother, or remembered the way his hands were shaking with something other than fear.)  

 

Time as a concept decayed. Everything narrowed down to the good of armour on armour (later skin on skin) and Dick’s voice, so hesitant and small, asking: ‘Can I help you?’

 

That had been like the answer to his benediction: something too bitter for relief had swelled up in him and carried Jason’s frantic acceptance to Dick’s ears. There were old sheets like silk against him and warmth like the sun all around him, then, in flashes.   

Jason can write essays on the way the smell of the city had clung to them, on how Dick had closed his eyes like surrender and an acceptance of damnation and a last rite all at once.     

   

-~-

 

Jason gets home and googles consent, after.

 

There's the image of Tim standing in the doorframe printed onto the inside of his eyes that guides his hands to the keyboard. His hair was a mess; he'd been wearing Jason's shoes. There was a look in his eyes the way people get five minutes after the announcement of the apocalypse, wired and stagnating when you can't stop thinking about what the death toll will be. Tim had already been counting corpses, then.

 

Actually Jason gets home and falls into bed for sixteen hours. The dark of the heavy blankets has always transported him back to younger times. He can be a kid hiding in his own make believe world again, or Robin who embraced the night like a favourite friend with Batman by his side. The effect isn't quite the same now but no one disturbs his quiet nest.

 

Emerging from underneath to discover the world almost exactly as he left it is a relief. The clock keeps ticking despite all the miseries of human existence. Time is dependable. People rarely are, though, so Jason forces an omelette down and tries not to gag. Three cups of tea are made and drank in silence before his laptop is opened.

 

The search bar of his home screen mocks him.

 

Jason gets home after everything, disappears from society for a while, eats, sips tea until his bloodstream calms and googles _consent_.

 

This isn't a regular Wednesday.

 

-~-

 

consent

noun: consent; plural noun: consents

permission for something to happen or agreement to do something.

 

consent

1\. To give assent, as to the proposal of another; agree.

2\. Archaic: To be of the same mind or opinion.

 

consent

verb

to permit, approve, or agree; comply or yield (often followed by to or an infinitive)

 

He checks the Oxford English Dictionary, the free dictionary, even dictionary.com. He was taught to research by Batman, okay.

 

(Bruce would have gotten out a yellowed by not dusty, impeccably bound encyclopaedia collection and spent a few hours brushing up on the philosophy of free will, but Bruce is Batman and wouldn't've fallen prey to Ivy's latest concoction and certainly wouldn't have been found clawing at Dick’s skin and snarling. Point is Jason has no idea how to handle this. The internet is as good a place as any to start.)

 

There's something like a haze in the back of his head holding his memories captive with fragile netting, like a horde of angry bees kept back by a floss patchwork. It's warm and dark. There are hands on his hips and something that must be his voice begging. He sounds wrecked and rushed, the vocals dodging through thick smoke just to escape his lips and live in the air. Jason listens to his past self murmuring yes, and please, and _come on_ accompanied by some vague incentives. His past self mocks him now and he can’t outrun the red hot blush jumping to his cheeks. Jason presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth hard, staring at the pixels on the screen.

 

Permission. Check.

 

( _Check_? traitorous Reason asks in incredulity. _I don't have time for you,_ Jason thinks, and presses it down and away.)

 

He's not so deep into self-denial to think himself cured by a simple word search. He's not in denial of anything, actually: look at him, accepting the facts and doing research and batting thoughts away. He's ignoring, not pretending nothing happened. Okay.  

 

Other people are always the wildcards in his world, unfortunately. He ought to be safe, surrounded by a set of men who grew up under Bruce's iron rule of repression, but Dick and Tim (and him too) never quite learnt that lesson all too well.

 

Jason doesn't even want to think about how interactions with Dick are going to evolve from now. The bad taste in his mouth hasn't evaporated and the picture of Tim's eyes still runs around his head. Tea won't clean it off.

 

He doesn't want to look at the screen. There's a mark on his couch (the one that doubles as his ammo store and general dumping ground) - unsurprisingly - but it's coffee rather than blood. Jason can't remember the last time he drank coffee.

 

The screen presents the word "agree". Jason thinks over it.

 

Permission is easy: it is an affirmative or lack thereof. It has no immediate motivations, no emotions and evaluations to consider. Permission was granted in not wrenching the hands from his skin but leaning into them instead. Moreover, permission was inherent in his asking.

 

( _Was it_? the smug voice counters, and Jason, suddenly vicious, thinks _shut the hell up._ His inner critic is such a bitch to the health of his psyche.)

 

Agreement is harder. Agreement requires a reason: an accompanying opinion to give context to one's permission. Jason has context, plenty of it, but no emotions he can as of yet pick out from the writhing mass inside his chest. He opens a new tab in his browser instead and leaves it be for now.

 

The epidemiology of consent comes from Latin. Con [together] and sentire [feel] conjoin to the modern English with a brief stroll through France. It means “feeling together” at its root. Jason almost chokes on the laugh that gets stuck in his throat.

 

 _Well we certainly felt_ something _together._

 

The shiver up his spine intensifies. It's a problem, he knows, but it's a problem he can't solve with inappropriate humour and irony, and that upsets the strong, dependable thing he built within himself to deal with this lifestyle.

 

Jason has been beaten to death by arguably the worst villain in the hemisphere and survived it without turning to the powers of google. There's a part of him really resenting Ivy's pollen experiments right now (okay, that part is all of him, but he's focusing on being annoyed by the internet instead of righteously outraged at neurotoxins and messy human emotions because he's not sure if he has enough tea to handle it.)

 

He stares at the screen for another twenty seven seconds before shoving the laptop away. It slides to the end of the bed and his foot snaps the lid shut.

Fuck this, Jason thinks with all the anger that he's been ignoring in favour of shock, and stomps off to take another shower.

 

-~-

 

Showers are something sacred to Jason. It might stem from lacking reliable running water during his childhood or just the associate of opulence the Wayne manor bestowed upon the idea of a bathroom (white marble finishes, underfloor heating and a stall the size of a king bed will do that to an impressionable mind.)

 

Washing the blood and guts away from his skin and out of his hair never fails to calm him. There are occasions when social decorum gets thrown out of the window and he sleeps there. Tim has found him, once or twice, pressed up against the tiles with damp clothes.

 

Showers are a ritual, a bubble Jason can step into and have the warped glass doors hold the world at bay. Even supervillains understand the sanctity of the shower.

 

His own mind is rebelling at the inner peace of the shower.

 

Jason feels a vague sense of indignation trying to break a crack into the layer of disgust and shock plastered over his thoughts.

 

The water is stingingly hot, a temperature only Arctic explorers and Jason tolerate. Usually the symbolism of the blood washing away from his skin, leaving it clear and pink, is enough to lift his mood. Now it scorches the bruises on his hips, emphasising the ache in his muscles and the bite mark that stings against his neck.

 

He's naked, too, and aware enough to catch glimpses of memories. His chest is a map of bruises and scratches. There's a graze on his lower back that spans the whole width. When he twists it's like the Grand Canyon painted onto skin. None of these are particularly uncommon to someone whose employment is built around violence, but it’s the shape that throws him off. Dick’s mouth fits perfectly over the indent in his arm. The bruises on his ribs map the exact space between Dick’s fingers.    

 

All of this really undermines the magical healing properties of the shower.  

 

He catches himself staring at the bite mark on his neck in the mirror, trailing his eyes over the individual indentations of each tooth and analysing the blush colour it has turned (tomato or scarlet or crimson, he wonders.) The water is abruptly turned off; Jason steps out, feels a strange disconnect sprouting up in his limbs, and punches the mirror hard.

 

The shards erupt outwards. It’s okay, though, because now he doesn’t have to look at himself and remember everything he let  - _fucking begged_ \- Dick to do to him.

 

-~-

 

There’s a knock on his door sometime later. It’s around mid morning and Jason fully ignores whoever it is. He probably shouldn’t have because five minutes later the window by his couch creaks open. The intruder makes no effort to disguise their entry. That’s either really good or really bad and Jason has a loaded Jericho in his hand anyway.

 

The barrel is pointing directly at Tim’s head a few seconds later. It takes Jason a moment or two to compute the possible reasons Tim might have for breaking and entering. He likes none of the solutions presented to him and decides that he isn’t ready to deal with human interaction yet, leaving the gun trained between the other’s eyes. That, at least, yields an expression from Tim different to his previous mild discomfort and wariness.

 

It’s almost normal enough: Jason vaguely threatening Tim’s life, the kid looking deeply unimpressed and a little insulted. It isn’t, though, because Tim had been there to pick Jason up from Dick’s apartment and Jason had run off before either could say a word. The dead look in Tim’s eyes is still etched onto Jason’s brain.

 

‘I really don’t have time for this,’ he manages in some futile attempt to dress up his desperation and disgust for the topic up as nonchalance. For once in his life Tim doesn’t try to push it. Jason is almost sad that he won't get the opportunity to compare him to a terrier with a bone, but he also really isn't.   

 

'I have your stuff,' Tim says, ignoring Jason's disguised plea of get out leave it alone not now please. Or maybe he doesn’t because Tim pulls Jason's Red Hood helmet from a shoulder bag and doesn't make any mention of the metaphorical elephant strolling around the room. When Jason doesn't move he elaborates.

 

'I took the liberty of adding some advanced filtration systems.'

 

He's moving too much for it to be natural: swaying slightly on his feet, running his fingers against his belt, eyes constantly flickering around the room. Jason takes pity and lowers the gun. 'How advanced?' God, his voice sounds awful. If either of them were less trained they would have both flinched.

 

'Very,' Tim flashes a dark smile, the sort that suggests a combination of skilful thievery and brilliant modifications on his part. 'There's a built in warning device should it detect any foreign particles or dangerous levels of toxins. I also added a small section designed to test any chemicals the sensors come into contact with. It’ll upload the chemical analysis to your computer.'

 

And Tim’s too, of course, but they share so much information at this point that Jason doesn’t even mind Tim knowing his passwords. (Isn’t that a terrifying thought?)

He wants to be thankful for everything Tim has done. A year ago, six months ago, well...Tim wouldn’t have bothered at all. But even if he had Jason wouldn’t have so much as touched the helmet, let alone trust the modifications.

 

They’ve both adapted. This is the sort of mercenary love that Jason can understand and accept and getting it from Tim, Tim...

 

He should be happy. He should be smirking an answer and exhaling an unsteady breath and thinking this is what I want. On any day that isn't today that sentiment holds true. He’d be pressing Tim to the couch and chuckling thanks into the boy’s lips.

 

Today Jason can only muster the will to nod and unload his gun. Saying thank you would acknowledge that it happened.

 

Tim somehow gets this. It's not a Robin thing, or a trained vigilante thing; it's a ‘Tim and Jason occasionally understand each other’ dynamic. He goes to leave, gets the whole way to a meter from the front door before pausing. (That’s new, too: Tim using the front door; Tim acknowledging the _existence_ of a front door. It’s either a stability settling into their bones or Tim’s delayed guilt from breaking his window that one time.)

 

A spike of energy staggers through Jason. His legs tense to bolt without a conscious thought. Something in his chest falters when Tim stops. His hand is inches from the handle of the door and Jason wants to hit him over the back of the head to keep him silent.

 

Tim doesn’t turn around, thank God. His shoulders are parallel to the doorframe, higher than they should be and exuding of tension.

 

‘I just wanted to say,’ Tim starts off. His voice is flat and dull. At least this is almost as bad for him as it is for Jason. ‘That.’

 

Jason watches Tim take in a deep breath, watches and thinks of all the things he could but won’t do to shut him up. When Tim speaks again his tone is recollected, smaller and more human than Red Robin allows himself to be seen. ‘I can guess at what you’ve been thinking.’ _Maybe_ is the answer Jason’s head spits out in protest to the statement. Tim must have the same thought; his arms shake in a hardly perceptible flinch.

 

‘Someone should tell you that it wasn’t informed consent.’ The words hit him in the middle of his stomach. ‘I - You don’t have to forgive him. Jason.’ Is that blood at the back of his mouth, Jason wonders? His head is reeling away. There’s a chance Tim is saying something.

 

The door closes with a clunk and he is alone.  

 

-~-

 

He's avoiding them. Gotham is a big city, Jason has his own marked territory and unless the gods intervene there is little overlap. Nightwing runs in Bludhaven most nights anyway. Jason still has no idea why he was in Gotham that night, so close to the edge of Jason's territory and sneaking around Channel Park. Neither anticipated Ivy, so at least the Bats are working on similar information to him.

 

In a few more days of splendid isolation he'll start to miss Tim. The feeling hasn't crawled up on him yet because he's a hardened, self-sufficient crime fighter who can and does live alone for the most part.

 

Jason isn't really looking forwards to their next encounter (because he can't and isn't trying to avoid them forever.) Dick will be hard enough to talk to but - Tim. _Tim_ is where another knot lies.

 

It would have been easier if Tim had found him that night.

 

There’s a black taste washing up his throat into his mouth at the thought. It seems wrong - forbidden - to consider Tim’s hands over Dick’s, him entirely more dependable and yet much more capricious. It would have been easier for Jason had he crossed paths with Red Robin.

 

Tim has some fluctuating moral code that Jason has never been able to predict. You’d think the three of them would be similar, having grown up under Batman’s iron rule. There had always been the assumption that Tim would be the closest to Bruce in his thinking before they had met, back when Jason was carrying around a writhing mass of emotion that was in danger of collapsing under it’s own gravity. Tim isn’t like Bruce or Dick at all, though.

 

Tim is fluid is ways the other Robins can never be, but he’s also the most inflexible. (Jason hisses  at the oxymoron his own narrative has created.) Jason and Dick are creatures of adaptation. They fit into their environment like chameleons: Dick might have more colours in his repertoire, but Jason is just as changeable as him.

 

Tim makes the world bend to him. It’s brilliant when it works and a disaster when it doesn’t. He doesn’t accept petty conditions such as logic or reason or physics when they block his goals. Those principles have a tendency to fight back, though, and Tim is a thousand things but he’s mostly human. He’s lost parts of himself to his inacceptance of reality the way Jason has sacrificed parts of his sanity for the air in his lungs.

 

He’d hate to know how Tim would remedy his morals against the reality of the situation against Jason’s morals against the balance between both their needs for revenge and justice against _feelings_ had Tim found him. Had Tim fucked him.

 

If Tim would even have deigned to.

 

The black taste suggests that scenario wouldn’t have played out any better than this one.

 

-~-

  

His life continues, shockingly. He runs out to get milk on Friday and stops a girl from getting run over on the way home. Roy texts about the last Game of Thrones episode. Patrol is mostly boring and some of his dealers end up in jail. The police like to surprise every so often by reminding him that they exist.

 

He gets a comm from Oracle Saturday morning, far too early for decent people to be awake. Jason’s been up all night.

 

‘Babs,’ he says, pressing two gloved fingers to the cool smooth metal of his helmet. _Trust in yourself._

 

‘Can you come up to the watchtower? There’s some footage from the docks you should take a look at.’ Her voice is cool, epitome of business.

 

The docks are drugs, and the docks are his. Somewhat. Jason’s empire is forever shifting with gang tensions and border lines written in smoke.

 

He shifts his route to swing by the tower. His view, standing solidly on the rooftops of the common housing, lets him look up at heart of Gotham with her shiny skyscrapers and concrete monstrosities. Its different to the city he grew up in. The Rouges still run but people have become more colourful. The morning commute is just starting. The cars are less ramshackle then they were ten years ago. The city isn’t much not safer, not by any measure, but there is a sense of growth and future that the people have not had for a long time before.

 

Batman is waning. He’s gone for long stretches now, an international and intergalactic hero. Gotham is changing without him. She’s growing up, perhaps, and learning to save herself. A police siren blares in the distance.

 

Jason takes him leave, swinging down onto the empty streets of Downtown and towards the Watchtower.  

 

-~-

 

He jumps in through the window. It’s a slightly stupid thing to do, just like his motorbike and too thin body armour. None of them should be taking any extra risks. Jason, however, likes to play with chance by leaving the door ajar for Fate to jump through and bite him.

 

The window is five floors from street level. He clears it as expected but the extra jolt through his heart sets a grin on his face.

 

There’s a temptation to blame his likely still unbalanced brain chemistry for the stunt, but Barbara knows him better than that. She goes on giving her mildly disapproving stare and Jason goes on ignoring it.

 

The Oracle station is set up in the centre of the room, a giant pillar of flatscreens and wires. Babs wheels around it at a dizzying pace, bringing up video footage and GCPD documents. He slouches against the brick wall, content for the moment to let her work uninterrupted. Despite all its similarities the set up doesn’t remind him of Bruce’s giant Bat Monitor in the cave.

 

Barbara has miniature cacti, contained in violently neon pots, dotted around the display. They teeter precariously on top of monitors. A few are suspended in bundles of wires that hang down. Her keyboard is a rainbow of colour. Someone has stuck Wonder Woman logo stickers all over the sides of one of the flatscreens (ten bucks says it’s Stephanie’s handiwork.)

 

The flatscreen catches his attention. It’s showing grainy CCTV footage of two figures struggling together down a street. It’s not the people that catch his attention - although they should, outfitted in what anyone would identify as superhero costumes - but the street. He knows that street the way dreams are remembered: a lingering sense of deja vu, a snatch of memory, and then the entire affair comes tumbling down over your head.

 

When he glances away at Barbara she is watching him. She’s too still for it to be coincidence.

 

“You found it,” he says, because he has to say something. Dick grapples him to the ground on screen.

 

She nods and hits pause. “I’ve deleted it from the police archive.” A look of distaste turns her mouth into a frown. “My father...I didn’t think either of you wanted people asking questions.”

 

Jason ought to be grateful but, once again, the emotion doesn’t come when called. “You kept a copy.”

 

“I needed to be sure. There were still,” her voice breaks off and her purses her lips. “I still have questions. And Bruce.”

 

Jason cuts her off before that sentence can go anywhere. A volcano has exploded inside of him at her words. Magma pools in his stomach at _questions_ and _Bruce_. There is evidence, now; physical footage of his weakness and Jason wants it _gone_.

 

“Delete it.” He barks his words and it isn’t a request. She opens her mouth to protest, a slightly stricken look on her face, and Jason shakes his head. “Delete it and I’ll answer your questions.”

 

God knows he doesn’t want to talk about this at all but the only way to get Barbara to concede a point is to offer her something she wants more. Their priorities fit together quite nicely.

 

“It was Poison Ivy,” Barbara says. Behind the glasses her eyes are sharp and evaluative. She’s waiting for him to bolt.

 

Jason could be an ass and not reply, because technically that was a statement and not a question. He’s tired, though, and the magma in his veins has cooled. It makes all his limbs heavy.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Neurotoxin, then. How quickly did it affect you?”

 

“Five minutes. My balance was all off.”

 

“Vertigo, disequilibrium,” she diagnoses. He almost expects her to be taking notes. “Did you feel nauseous?”

 

“No.” Jason remembers thinking it strange that he didn’t want to be sick in the bushes. “Just delirious.”

 

“How so?”

 

He swallows. “Everything looked different. I don’t remember seeing colours, or shapes. There was just this itch under my skin.”

 

“You were looking for release.” She carefully skips over anything too vulgar, tiptoeing around Jason’s psyche. “And you found Dick.”

 

Jason nods, not trusting his voice.

 

‘‘Was he contaminated?’ Barbara asks. Her voice waxes and wanes, soft and wary at her most astounded.

 

His minds jars on that. _Contaminated_. Jason wants to fire off a sarcastic line at that, something to cover the way his whole mind flinches from the idea. ‘Maybe,’ he answers eventually. Shit. _Fuck_. Dick gone the same way he had been? High on neurotoxins and whatever the hell else Ivy had dropped in? He hadn’t, why hadn't he considered it? It screws with the scales in his head that pit him against Dick and calculate blame. Jason’s lead weight of self pity evaporates and the plates jerk even.  

 

‘You don’t know?’ the look on her face flickers to a domestic incredulity, the sort people wear when they encounter something they can’t imagine themselves not doing. Tim had had that expression when he discovered that no, Jason did not document and organise his list of contacts on excel worksheets that could be cross referenced by type of crime and ethnicity.

 

‘No.’ His voice carries a little too loudly in the room. ‘It hasn’t come up.’ _Mostly because we’re mutually avoiding each other_. His fingers itch for a cigarette. They tap against his body armour, running obsessively over the rivets and edges of the plating.

 

Barbara is silent for a minute. Her eyes are on him but unfocused. The cogs turning in her head are almost visible and it’s making Jason motion sick. ‘Have you spoken to him?’

 

He glances at the ground, one hand curled over the window ledge. It would be simple to shift the weight into that hand, jump his legs up and over the ledge into the night. The weight of Barbara’s gaze, commanding her full attention, leaves his legs shaking and cripples his confidence in the jump. ‘No.’ He feels like he’s trapped in a world where his vocabulary only contains two letter negatives.

 

‘Are you going to?’ her follow-up is swift as if she had anticipated his response.  Jason shifts his weight, leaning against the wall and noticing his breath. It doesn’t help, it just reminds him of the phantom feel of Dick’s weight above him.

 

‘I’ll have to work with him sometime. Gotham’s big bads don’t take lots of holidays,’ Jason says in lieu of facing the question. Barbara won’t let him get away with it, but there’s still a bit of brazen hope lingering in him that if he’s difficult enough everyone will just give up on him.

 

‘You’ve got to talk to him. Get a sample from your helmet to Bruce or me, we can take a look and see what exact biological function it might’ve had, but knowing Ivy…’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t imagine, Jason, but neither of you can just ignore this.’

 

‘Why not?’ his response is knee jerk and angry.

 

‘Because if you don’t resolve this neither of you will ever have a relationship with each other again!’ her voice raises in frustration. ‘He wouldn’t have done anything unless he was also contaminated. Jason. Ivy’s toxins are usually locally airborne, which means that if you’re near someone infected you can easily inhale particles from their clothes or skin. It’s designed to incapacitate anyone who tries to help.’

 

He looks at her, finally. Her eyes are wide and fixed upon him; laser like if not for the emotion behind them. (And Dick had held Jason up to keep him from falling, someone taller and heavier than him, of course he had been close enough to inhale the pollen.)

 

‘He won’t forgive himself for this,’ she continues softly. ‘He’ll give you space.’

 

‘And if I don’t forgive him?’ Jason asks, pokes into Barbara’s philosophy to find an underpinning philosophy. The lines of her face turn bewildered. An eyebrow curves up to ridicule Jason’s absurdity.  

 

‘We’re family.’ It’s her underlying truth and it overrules all counter points.

 

Jason jumps from the window.

 

-~-

 

Jason is in the meagre parody of a school locker room in the Batcave when Dick walks in.

 

The mist from the shower hasn’t quite cleared yet, mostly due to the insulation and the underfloor heating Bruce seems to demand from every room in the manor. His hair is still a little wet and curling slightly in the humidity. Granted, he may dislike Bruce and hate Batman but _damn_ does the Batcave have nice showers. Jason died in his service; the least he should get is free water usage.

 

(On an unrelated but equally important note, the water pressure in the cave is heavenly and everything smells like spice. He might have a stockpile of stolen shampoo in his flat downtown.)

 

He’s got his clothes on, thank god, because wouldn’t it have been three more shades of uncomfortable if Dick walked in on him naked? Of course he doesn’t exactly pause to appreciate the circumstances of the situation, mostly because Dick is standing right there.

 

He’s sort of frozen in the doorway (the one that leads to the back entrance of the cave, which tells Jason that he’s here as Nightwing, not the ward of Mr Wayne, despite the casual clothes he’s wearing.) Even in his stunned state his fingers are rubbing against the hem of his shirt. Jason has never actually seen Dick stand stock-still – he could probably manage it if he tried, but it’s clearly not a natural stance.

 

They’re caught in each other’s gazes. Jason’s shoulders are half dropped towards the floor, a hand wrapped around a discarded shirt. Dick stares without blinking. It’s avian.

 

One of them is going to have to speak and it’s not going to be Jason.

 

He’s being obtuse and he doesn’t care. Instead he rummages with the free hand through the bag in front of him for a bottle of water.  It’s not very effective given that he hasn’t raised his eyes from Dick’s face the entire time. If he drops his gaze the scale inside his chest that marks blame and accusation will tip towards Dick. He can’t lose more ground.

 

Dick licks his lips.

 

Jason waits one, two, three more moments. He blinks, glances down and locates the water. His eyes fall to the bench (dammit) but his hands haven’t started shaking yet so overall it might just be a victory. The shaky creature inside of him can’t decide if it wants to tear Dick’s face off or run away. Violence and demands have never worked too well on bats, though, so Jason gives into the tiredness.

 

He makes for the other exit – the one that will lead him back through the main floor of the cave, maybe into Bruce or the brat – because he knows suddenly and absolutely that he can’t walk past Dick. What will happen if he does isn’t clear but also not a situation Jason wants to try.

 

‘Jason, wait,’ Dick says. His voice startles Jason in its familiarity. He expected it to be gravelled, strained or whispered. It’s not; just bland, usual.

 

He waits. He doesn’t grace Dick with a verbal queue.

 

‘I’m sorry,’ the voice behind him says. He doesn’t want to but he turns on his heel anyway. Dick has taken a silent step forward, a hand braced against a half open locker door. It’s like a scene out of a high school rom com, Jason absurdly contrasts. The handsome lead, fresh from a sporting victory bound to elevate him to godliness for the whole of the next three days, admits his faults to the wronged sidekick and begs his forgiveness. All are captivated by his gentle words, his kind soul, the water trailed down his glistening abs….

 

They forgive him. The hero always gets redemption. Tim’s words echo in Jason’s head. _You don’t have to forgive him_. Forgiveness is treated as a requisite in polite circles: someone asks and you give it. You just let all prior claims to anger fall away between your fingers.

 

Jason grew up in alleyways and amid the worst of humanity, though. Forgiveness is the luxury of those who haven’t.

 

‘For what?’ he replies instead. He has to know where he stands with Dick. His gaze turns, enough that he can see the expression on the other man’s face.

 

‘I’m sorry I didn’t think of an alternative.’ Something hot and ugly twists inside Jason at that. ‘I’m sorry that it came to that. You know I would never have hurt you.’

 

 _You did,_ Jason wants to reply, scathing. _You took that one trauma I’ve always hated the most and you used it to undo me, and you claim it was a kindness. Do you know what I used to do?_ He wants to yell it into Dick’s face. _I used to get down on my knees for a bit of bread or another needle. Fuck you, Dick, for thinking sex is something simple enough to explain away._

 

He says that last bit aloud, actually, the _fuck you Dick for thinking sex is something you can explain away_. He gets the cold horror-pleasure of watching Dick’s mouth drop open. It’s just an inch, only an inch from his top lip but it shows the shock well enough (and Jason chuckles darkly in some locked corner of his mind at just an inch.)

 

Maybe Dick has finally put one and one together to get two. Or perhaps he’d forgotten just how different Jason had grown up, and just how separate their list of priorities is.

Dick swallows past it quickly enough (once a Robin always a Robin, and always prepared to skirt around the ugly truths Bruce failed to hide.) Jason can see the moment that Dick realises that sorry will never be the right answer.

 

‘How do I fix this?’ he asks instead, that infuriating optimism written into his bones peaking out with the question. Jason sighs and screws the cap tighter.

 

‘ _You_ don’t fix anything.’

 

He turns fully and leaves, out into the dark of the cave and away from the nausea.

 

-~-

 

It’s way too early in the morning when Jason wakes. He’s used to predawn stalking and drug deals, but he decides those. This time it’s his phone that take charge of his awakening.

 

Luckily for Jason the moment the impersonal tone starts buzzing he’s wide awake. It’s tossed under the bed, probably almost out of charge. The tone identifies it as his personal one - or, well, as personal as the Red Hood can get. None of his informants or... _colleagues_ have this number. Tim, he thinks, and goes fishing for it.

 

DICK is the name on the screen. It makes him freeze, half hung over the side of his bed and staring.

 

“What.” His voice is toneless. Jason pulls the sheets up around him, as if he could huddle in bed and let the blankets protect him from the world.

 

“Jason.” Dick sounds surprised that he answered. Surprised and awful. Jason almost wants to ask if he’s drunk.

 

“I, there’s a lot I want to say to you. I talked to Tim, yesterday“ [Jason’s blood freezes] “and, well, he said I should stop existing in my bubble of self pity. And stop treating you like you’re fragile. And some other stuff, too. So I thought we should talk.”

 

Jason picks his response by number of syllables. “About what.”

 

“About what happened. About, about how I can’t even say it,” Dick laughs self deprecatingly. Jason is not charmed. “Poison Ivy’s neurotoxin messed us both up, Jason, you more than me. I understand that you hate me. But I want us to be alright.”

 

It’s so typically Dick, acknowledging and then tossing away other people’s emotions in the name of heroics or compassion or teamwork or some shit. Well meaning guys do it all the time to hide their selfishness.

 

It’s not something that’s going to change.

 

“Look, we’re going to have to work together at some point. I’d rather it not be like this. Babs, Barbara said that we only just got you back. I don’t want to lose you all over again, Jason. You’re my brother. I know we never got on, and that’s partly my fault I suppose, I resented you, but when you died...” Dick’s voice has gone soft and jagged.

 

It’s a low move, bringing in family. Dick knows how much Jason had admired it all, and him too, and Dick knows how much Jason desperately wants a family. Dick knows because Dick wants it too, and maybe Jason can’t forgive him but he could move on if it meant being a step closer to their shared ideal.

 

“Yeh, okay.” Jason cuts in. There’s a pause that goes on a few seconds longer that it should.

 

“Sorry?” Dick asks.

 

“I said, yeh. Okay. We’re...good. Or as close as we can get to that.”

 

“Really?” Dick shouldn’t be testing his luck, giving Jason outs like this.

 

“Like you said, _Dick_ ,” and Jason stresses his name because it’s accurate, “family. For family.” Bruce is sort of shitty at family, or learning to love anything other than Justice unconditionally. Dick is a bit better. Jason is hardly great. They try, though, even if it’s never actually worked. They try, and they brush all their faults and grievances under the carpet.

 

Jason is all prepared to hang up and go the fuck back to sleep, but Dick says “Bruce captured Ivy” and he stops. Just. What.

 

He says that out loud, evidently (a bad habit around Dick, maybe) because Dick keeps talking. “I only know because I was talking to Captain Delarova and he mentioned a big meta arrest down in Gotham they were trying to keep quiet.”

 

Because of course Bruce can’t figure it out and talk to him, or ignore it, no, he’s got to arrest someone who will only break out in a month again anyways.

 

“Goodbye, Dick,” Jason says and hangs up. He pulls the covers over his face and goes back to sleep.

 

-~-

 

'Ivy was brought into Arkham over the weekend,' Jason tries. It's a futile move alone; Bruce's shoulders stay high and firm at his ears as he types into the computer. 'It was a pretty stealthy affair.' No change.

 

 _Was it for me?_ Jason wants to ask. The question would seem foolish if spoken aloud here, a childish sound swallowed by the blackness of the cave. This used to be his young paradise.

 

'Yes,' Bruce says, eventually. A small spark of triumph wakes in Jason: Bruce does it not to confirm the information but to open a door to conversation. He is most easily enticed into speaking by the Robin he failed. It's his way of apologising, maybe, by guarding his inner gates to Jason with only a padlock when everyone else gets a fortress.  

 

'Why?' Jason has to ask. It's vague enough not to reveal hurt or intent.

 

'She _is_ a vigilante,' he replies. There is a carpeting of dry humour to statements like these, where Bruce answers only to demonstrate the idiocies of others. Something that might be disappointment leaks out of Jason. The cave is quiet now.

 

Batman is at his database, more machine than man. Jason has no place here now. There are no hooks on the wall for his uniform or keys to the lockers. He has no right to ask for Batman's justice.

 

He turns to leave.

 

'Jason, wait.'

 

 _What_? Some eternally incensed bit of him howls. _Wait for you? I did that once. I bled and screamed and lay in wait and you never came._ The sixteen year old in him is crying into his fists.

 

'Poison Ivy was for you.'

 

It's all Jason wanted to hear. He pushes instead, tries to see how far dying has gotten him into Bruce’s fortress. 'And Dick?'

 

Bruce's sigh is almost undetectable (Tim will know it happened because Tim will hack the security footage and see the blip in his vitals; Jason will not.) 'I condemn the fault.'

 

'And not the actor of it?' Jason replies, quickfire. SHAKESPEARE flashes in his head, a self satisfied traffic cone.

 

'In this I have to love the sinner and hate the sin.' Bruce is still turned away and facing the desk. Jason is glad to be able to hide the look on his face. 'All I can do is stop it from ever happening again.’

 

 _You’ll probably fail,_ Jason thinks to himself. _You can’t keep us all safe_. Every single night Batman goes out to protect the people and every morning he has failed his self imposed duty. As long as crime exists (as long as humanity exists) Batman cannot be successful.

 

It makes Jason sad to think it and yet he’s surprised that it has never occurred to him before. Bruce has always been a responsible, trustable shadow in his mind. To realize that he is more acquainted with failure than any of them is strange.

 

‘She’ll break out,’ Jason says, but his tone is light and almost teasing because he knows Bruce’s answer.

 

‘Then I’ll capture her again.’

 

-~-

 

For a hungry superhero in downtown Gotham there are only a small number of take out places (restaurants seems a bit too generous of a title) happy to ignore the spandex and tights. Not that he or anyone sensible wears either of those things, mind, it’s just an expression likely born from Dick’s over enthusiastic fashion attempts as Robin.   

 

As a rule superheroes try to avoid popping up on social media. Maintaining an aura of fear and respect is hard when you are in the background of teenage girls’ selfies, in Gotham at least. Jason scowls, thinking back to Roy’s recent Instagram crusade

 

The Happy Garden is one of those places where the zombie like staff lift no eyebrows at the guns holstered to Jason’s thighs and ignore any suspicious stains on the money he hands over. No one will be aiming phone cameras at him tonight. Establishments like this one are rare, though, and Jason attributes the lack of overlap between discrete venues and those that won’t result in food poisoning for Tim’s presence.

 

Red Robin is studying the crumpled menu as if it contains the answers to the universe and the codes to the Batmobile. There’s a good four feet of distance between them, sandwiched as they are in what once must have been a dead end alley. Someone had at some point put up a cardboard kiosk and bits of a kitchen and called in the Happy Garden, eager to lure in late night visitors with cheap, hot food. Jason has a nagging suspicion that 1) the frame really is made of cardboard and 2) the owner is the very same old woman who used to yell at him for knocking her flower pots over.

 

Tim has elected to stand as far to the edge of the counter as physically possible. The result is him being squished into the brick wall. The overall effect might’ve made Jason chuckle if only the grave tilt of Tim’s lips didn’t suggest something still misaligned between the two of them. As it is, he takes a moment to grin before moving to more sombre reflections.  

 

Dick’s words are still fresh in his mind, floating around on the surface like scum in water. Jason shifts, leaning one elbow on the counter ( _gingerly_ ) and openly appraises the boy beside him. Tim couldn’t ignore an opening like that. On queue he fidgets, scrunching a shoulder up and then down again.

 

It goes on for half a minute, Jason calmly watching the charade of aborted movements and uncomfortable looking stretches. Tim is doing it on purpose; trying to avoid whatever conversation he might be drawn into. It’s the evasion that settles Jason’s mind away from a harmless quip about the food and onto deeper subjects.

 

He glances into the kitchen just visible. There’s only one employee at this time of night (unsafe, considering the neighbourhood) and the food order between them is enough to keep him occupied. Even so, he pitches his voice low.

 

“Are you angry it wasn’t you?”

 

Tim is too good an actor to freeze and give away his surprise. His movements do stutter, just slightly, although in the gloom Jason finds himself questioning his own eyes. The sigh is audible though, intentionally so.  

 

“I wouldn’t have.” Tim pushes himself out of the corner to emphasise his point. “You know I wouldn’t have.”

 

 _Do I?_ Jason thinks, and immediately the answer echoes in him mind. _Yes_. Tim shares his view of consent, and rape, and its physiological effects. They both understand that it’s better to die than to live through some things.  

 

“Are you angry that it was Dick?’ Tim asks, taking his turn to needle.

 

“It should have been you,” Jason answers without thought.

 

Tim’s voice is startlingly high as his head snaps around. He is finally looking at Jason, at least.. “It shouldn’t have been anyone!” His mouth opens to a gesture of surprise, and Jason can hear his deep inhale before continuing. “I’m angry that it was Dick, yes, I’m angry at Dick, but I’d be angry at anyone for doing something like that. Including myself.” He adds the final point in a hard tone, as if to beat the thought out of Jason’s head.

 

“So, what, you’re angry at the objective ethics of the situation?” Jason asks, and if his voice is more a bark he ignores it.

 

“Do you want me to be incensed that it happened, or angry that it happened to _you_?” Tim returns. The pitch of the conversion has been steadily increasing until he drops his voice, his eyes, his entire frame dropping. It’s strange to watch Tim wilt so easily. “Do I have a right to feel that way?”  

 

Jason understands the questions, knows perfectly well what Tim is asking, and chooses to check the little internal box with an X through coward and backtracks the hell away. “You can feel however you want to, Tim.” (And its both funny and horrifying, then, because Jason could direct Tim’s feelings, just like Dick and Bruce do, he could manipulate him out of his anger and take away his right to fury like a carpet pulled from under his feet.) “I don’t want to screw with you friendship bracelet hero worship dynamic with Dick.” It’s a little low of him to mention how totally infatuated Tim can be with the caped crusaders, maybe. But. He’s already marked the box.

 

Tim doesn’t take his bullshit. “That’s not an answer.”

 

“I’ve already said I’d have rather it had been you, Tim. What else do you want?” The second it’s out of his mouth Jason faintly regrets giving Tim the opportunity to list everything Jason can never give him.

 

“What I want is to know if I’m just the guy you’d _prefer_ to sleep with when drugged or. Or.” Tim’s voice get’s a little choked at the end, like his lungs have made a last ditch attempt to shut him up by collapsing themselves.

 

And _goddamn_ it, but Jason has to ask. “Or?”

 

“Nothing.” Tim’s jaw moved in a way that’s way too attractive for Jason to be thinking about right now.

 

“Bullshit,” Jason says, and it’s funny how even now the word makes Tim jump. “What’s the other option?” He’s being cruel, now, when only a few seconds ago he was running like hell from answering the very same question he’s shoving onto Tim’s shoulders.

 

He doesn’t blame Tim for letting it fall either. “It’s nothing you want to hear.”

 

Jason opens his mouth, retort already poised to spring from his lips, when two things happen at once. Their takeout order is up and there’s a scream from the street, loud and high pitched and followed by the scrap of fists and boots on pavement. Tim glances back, bo staff out and in motion before Jason can intercede. He sighs, lets Red Robin be the saviour of the people. Jason collects the food, studies it suspiciously, decides it is safe to consume, and walks off into the night.

 

-~-

 

He ends up perched on a statue, high up on the ledge above one of the older libraries in town. It was once a government building, explaining the ornate but weathered Roman senators encased in stone. Specifically he is resting against the armour clad figure of some anonymous warrior, who clutches a sword and turns away from whatever imaginary foe he fights. A family of pigeons has made a nest in the statue’s upturned helmet.  

 

The Chinese take out is arranged at his feet. The boxes line up by height order, creating a neat little line waiting to be devoured. Tim’s boxes are a little apart so he doesn’t eat them, a peace offering if Jason ever made one.

 

Tim jumps onto the roof about ten minutes later. It surprises Jason that he isn’t surprised. Tim pulls his mask off and sits, cross legged, against another statue. Why there are so many Greek statues on the roof Jason doesn’t know. Tim might, but he isn’t going to ask because it might be perceived as distraction from the topic still hanging in the air and for once in his life Jason wants to watch it play out.

 

Tim must sense that, somehow, because he pulls a little leftover aggression out of his tiredness and stuffs it into his shoulders. It makes him sit up straight, gives a little fire back into his eyes.

 

“You’re the one who tried to back out of this for weeks.”

 

“Yeh, well, haven’t exactly been in the mood lately,” Jason replies. Tim shakes his head.

 

“Before. I mean, before everything. You ran at the slightest hint of this conversation.”

 

“Yeh.” Well, it’s true. “I don’t know what to say so that I don’t fuck this up.” _I didn’t know what you wanted or what I wanted_ , Jason wants to tell Tim. He has to be brave, now, because he opened the subject up after Tim did just about everything to give him space. He’s got to follow through. “What’s the other option?”

 

“You don’t want to say it so you’re making me say it?” Tim asks, and there’s fresh anger in him, not just the recycled, fabricated kind from before.

 

“When I said that I wish you had been there instead of Dick it was because you’re you, Tim, not because you’re a better lay than Dick,” Jason answers. He keeps his tone measured, makes pains to hide the importance of what he’s saying. _I’m comfortable around you,_ only that’s not quite it. It’s something more, something dependable about Tim that -

 

“You trust me.” Oh. Tim’s voice is quiet, only just in human hearing, like he’s testing the words out before he puts faith and strength into them. Well...he’s not wrong.

 

Trust isn’t easy to come by, not for Jason, not for Tim. Who else, Jason thinks, who else do I trust? He trusts Kori, he trusts Roy - but it’s different. He wouldn’t trust them with Gotham, with the people here who he protects. He wouldn’t give them the keys to his cartel or the crown to his dust and dirt empire.

 

Jason looks at Tim, looks at him long enough that a smile starts to curve on his face. He’s glad he took the helmet off. “Yeh.” His voice is a little hoarse, a touch deeper than usual. The muscles in his arms relax. “You trust me too.” 

**Author's Note:**

> My Tumblr is [here](http://cherryflamed.tumblr.com), incidentally, should you want to find me on another medium where I mostly post superheroes and short stories I don't put up here. :D


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